Changed Things
by wingedraksha
Summary: She couldn't get them out of her head, those eyes. His eyes. Kyro


She was trying, mostly, to just stay away. She was trying, even more than that, to not have a _reason_ to stay away. She was doing a pretty good job of the first part. The second part, though…

Because he was staying in the mansion now, avoiding him meant Kitty was more or less limited to her bedroom and the bathroom in terms of Safe Places, places where she was absolutely certain not to hear him or see him or, god forbid, _smell_ him. (She remembered, or thought she remembered, that he smelled like sandalwood and candle smoke. But it was possible that that was just her head, making things up, lying to her, playing mean little tricks.) It got boring fast, and after the first two days she was seriously considering sneaking out through the walls, but it was also the only way she could bring herself to handle the thought of having him back here, in her life, as if nothing had happened.

Although, really, it shouldn't have been that hard a thought to swallow. After all, it wasn't like anything _had_ happened, right? It had never been Kitty-and-John, had it? Not before he left, not during the war, not now after he was back. Even though the intellectual parts of her knew that, wouldn't stop saying it, her heart couldn't accept the idea. Her heart, stupid thing that it was, couldn't get away from… from…

She didn't even know what it was, exactly, between them. Before he'd run, they hadn't even kissed. Not once. Only that one insane night, when she'd found him wandering the grounds dizzy-drunk on Logan's purloined spirits, and instead of getting one of the teachers she'd led him carefully upstairs and gotten him into his room. Kitty could still see his blurry gaze on her as she pushed him gently down to his bed, letting her help him swing his feet up onto the mattress and, very carefully, unlace and remove his combat boots. He'd just watched her, without even a single crass remark (and oh, the kind of things he would have said had he been sober), and he'd even let her brush the hair out of his face (not because she cared about him, nothing like that, just because, because he looked so _lost_ like that, so _lonely_), reaching up and grabbing her wrist but letting it go almost immediately after. And when Kitty had set his boots on the floor beside his bed and turned to leave, he hadn't stopped her. She'd been the one to stop, hesitating at the doorway and looking back at him sprawled limply across the bedspread. He'd felt her eyes on him, somehow, and had lifted his head just enough to look at her. No smile, no quirky wicked lift of the brow, nothing that she associated with John-call-me-Pyro Allerdyce. Just those haunted hazel eyes, much darker in the nightgloom than they'd been outside under the almost-full moon.

"Kitty," he'd said then, very quietly. His voice, from drink and exhaustion both, was raspy. "Katherine Pryde." And then he'd let his head fall back and she'd turned to face his door for one still, half-stunned moment, and then she'd slipped silently out.

He hadn't ever mentioned it, of course. The only way she'd even known (and even this was hardly decisive evidence) that he remembered at all was that the next day, when he'd walked past her in the kitchen, she'd accidentally stared and he'd caught her gaze and held it for a long, even moment. Then he'd looked past her to where Rogue was pouring glasses of ice water, raised his finger for a cup, and hadn't so much as glanced back to where Kitty stood by the table. And Kitty, who didn't care about him at all, not one bit, felt a little like crying.

Now, with absolutely nothing connecting Katherine Pryde to John Allerdyce but that one surreal evening which, she was sure, meant far more to her than it did to him (because even then, even then she couldn't quite get away from him, because somewhere inside she couldn't get those quiet dark eyes to go _away_), Pyro was back at the Xavier Institute and Kitty was afraid to face him.

And so on the morning of the third day, just as she was planning the best possible route out of the mansion without having to interact with any actual living people, it wasn't entirely surprising when Jubilee burst into her room.

"Kitty, this is so stupid." Kitty looked up from her bed, where she'd been sitting and buttoning up her shirt. She finished the last button and glared at the Asian girl.

"Jesus, Jubes, couldn't you knock?"

"You're one to talk. Listen, Kitty," Jubilee continued, walking over to sit beside her, "John's back. You've got to deal with it."

"I am dealing with it."

"No, you're not. In fact, you're not dealing with _anything_, including your friends." Kitty stood abruptly, and shook her head.

"I don't know," she said after a moment. "I- no, I just…" She turned, letting out a funny little laugh. "God, Jubilee, it _is_ stupid. I'm not… I'm not in love with him." She looked at Jubilee, searching, and the other girl nodded encouragingly. "That would be ridiculous, right? I mean, come on; I don't even… I don't even _know_ him, really, and he's one of Magneto's boys, or he was, and so… Shit, Jubes." She put a hand against her eyes. "I don't know why I'm doing this. I don't know anything." Jubilee got slowly to her feet, going to put an arm around Kitty's shoulders.

"I can't tell you to go down there and play Scarlet to his Rhett, Kit-Kat; he's kind of a scary guy. But you gotta get out of this room, and I don't just mean sneaking outside…" Jubilee sighed. "You know what? Fuck it. Go make wild, passionate love if you want. They let him back here for a reason, after all." Kitty pulled away, blushing against her will.

"I'm not going to…" It was her turn to sigh. She bit her lip. "Yeah, I'll go down. If…" Breaking off, she looked at Jubilee, feeling hateful vulnerability twist down her throat. "If you come with me."

"'Course."

So Kitty let herself be pulled out of the room, guided just as gently as she had once guided John. Her heart, though, was beating faster than she wagered his had ever done, save perhaps on the killing field. _The killing field_. The thought was an ugly one, and Kitty felt her stomach drop. Not for the first time, she wondered what exactly had come home to the mansion after all: John, or Pyro.

It was a nice enough day that few of the mansion's inhabitants were inside as Jubilee and Kitty made their way down the stairs towards the massive living room. Jubilee, however, moved purposefully enough that Kitty suspected the other girl knew exactly where John was, and that he wasn't outside at all.

"He's in there," Jubilee said, confirming Kitty's thought. Her voice, normally loud and somewhat brash, was very low now. "That's what he does all day; sits and reads. Or looks like he's reading. Hey, kind of like you; maybe you _are_ meant for each other."

"Shut up," Kitty mouthed, not turning to look at the other girl. Her eyes were fixed on the couch that faced away from the doorway they were standing in, and its solitary occupant.

John Allerdyce, from what she could see from this angle, had stopped dyeing his hair since the last time she'd seen him. (Sweatshirt, jeans, spiky blond boy with fire in his hands.) The roots were growing out, brownish gold. Like his eyes.

"It's not polite to stare," he said suddenly, evenly, without looking over his shoulder. Jubilee blushed out of habit, but Kitty, at the sound of his voice (Kitty. Katherine Pryde.), blanched. Something like sickness filled her, rising up like wine, and she had to keep herself from turning around and running. It wasn't fear, exactly; it wasn't like what she'd felt at Alcatraz or even anything comparable. It was…

"Well, go on," Jubilee said, not bothering to keep her voice low now. She put a hand on Kitty's back, lightly, as if she knew that if she pressed any harder the Shadowcat would leave nothing for her to touch. Kitty stumbled forward, and went around the couch to stand a few feet shy of John's long, stretched-out legs.

He looked up at her, a paperback novel in his lap, and there was a flicker of surprise in that twist of mouth.

Without gel in his hair, Kitty saw, it fell loosely into his eyes and across his forehead. He hadn't shaved recently, either; his chin was stubbly, his sideburns a little rougher than in the days before he'd left the mansion. He looked older, she thought, and at the same time more like himself than he'd ever been. More like that flash of him she'd seen, rather, in his bedroom with the lights out. The hazel eyes were dark, like that night, and quiet, and unreadable. She could see no bitterness in his face, no anger. Nothing like what she'd (dreaded) expected.

"Kitty," he said. "Katherine Pryde."

And now she did tear up, because she couldn't help it, because he was there on the couch with those secrets in his eyes that wouldn't leave her, wouldn't leave her alone, hadn't left her alone since she first glimpsed them over a year ago, and he had said her name and it _hurt_.

Kitty didn't fall to her knees, didn't collapse, didn't grab his hand. She sat down beside him on the sofa, and cried, and it was John who leaned over and touched her cheek. She looked at him, everything in her clenching and releasing to the rhythm of the pulse she could feel in his fingertips against her face.

"Are you okay?" she asked, choked, which seemed like the most useless, inane, and utterly necessary thing in the world to ask. "Are you going to be okay?" She sniffed, trying to keep her voice from trembling. John wiped away a track of tears before pulling back his hand. One corner of his mouth angled up.

"Still tryin' to take care of me, after all this?" She laughed a little, hiccupped, shrugged, looked away. Embarrassed. Afraid. Uncertain. He reached out again and, after a tiny, almost imperceptible hesitation, tilted her chin towards him. Held her gaze. There were changed things in his eyes, Kitty saw then; there were things that hadn't been there before and things that were different or hurt or missing. He was a changed thing. They were all changed things.

"I can't help trying to take care of you," she said, very softly. John paused, studying her. She couldn't look at his eyes for this long, couldn't stand it without (without what? Without touching him, running from him, wanting him, _loving_ him?) needing to drop his gaze, and so she looked at his hand that had moved to rest lightly against the top of the couch. There were new scars there, at his bare wrist. Burn scars. John leaned closer, and Kitty froze. She looked to his face, his mouth, that supple mouth.

"Thank god," is what he said, very simply, and she was startled enough to look directly at him. "Thank god."


End file.
